Preliminary Programme

Already in 1984 Olwen Hufton revealed that in eighteenth-century France women who could not afford to live alone sometimes pooled their resources in a shared home. In England spinster clustering seems to have been more rare, although not unknown. Discussions so far have concentrated on spinster clustering as an essentially urban phenomenon, often related to the migration of women from the countryside into the town.
In this paper we explore the economic activities and living arrangements of all-female households in two rural areas around the city of Bruges on the basis of the census of 1814. In particular we look at female units headed by never-married women.
The census of 1814 enables us to provide an overview of the professions and household situations of single women above the age of 30. At that age, women exceeded the mean age of marriage and presumably had to develop very specific subsistence strategies. The rural surroundings of the city of Bruges provide an excellent case to study the strategies of such women as the region had different structural environments with specific opportunities and limitations linked to its economic, geographic and institutional particularities (different social agro-systems). The polder area (north of Bruges) was a rich agricultural area with large holdings and commercially oriented farms while the south of Bruges, the inland area, had mostly smallholders and peasant households primarily occupied with survival. Intensive cultivation of the land was complemented by a constant search for additional sources of income which they found in market production through proto-industrial activities from the linen industry. The census of allows us to look at the occupations for single women in these two different social agro-systems, but it also provides us with material to look more into depth at their living arrangements. In which areas and among which occupations were female households more common? And did these women mostly live with close or extended kin or with non-relatives?

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The study on the position of women as heads of households is based on original census material from the states of the former German Customs Union, mainly from 1846. These data provide information about gender-specific life-courses, which include temporary or permanent functions as household heads. The conditions under which this occurred are examined by comparing subsamples. By this approach regional features as well as differences between urban and rural settlements and preindustrial and industrial towns are revealed. In particular the position of the elderly is highlighted. Finally it is questioned what the observed differences meant for women in specific contexts, and the economic and cultural factors influencing their life-conditions are discussed. (Show less)

In this paper we use our expanded data set of population registers from 30 neighborhoods in mid 19th century Kyoto in combination with other documents to both re-examine the question of female heads of household and evidence of their agency and decision-making power. While we have addressed the question of female headed households and women’s role in business in the past, this paper will use new data and apply new analyses to the question.

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We analyze the socioeconomic situation of poor households headed by women, in particular about salary, educational discrimination and workplace. Many of them are single women, without a spouse, and then to survive, they are forced to work largely in any job they manage to find.
Their poverty condition forces them to seek government support for their children to have food, education and health, with the hope that they achieve a better standard of living. Thus, poor women who are mothers looking to enroll in the Oportunidades Programme. Oportunidades is the contemporary government Programme against poverty in Mexico and was established in 1997.
This Programme is centred on a concept of maternalism a vision of women’s traditional, social and biological roles, and offers poor women cash in exchange for their good motherhood. As such and in order to ensure success, women are incorporated into the design of the Programme in a sense that necessarily deepens gender divisions. Oportunidades ultimately reinforces social divisions, with the resulting replication of gender asymmetries, even though in the management of support resources it marginally empowers women within the household. The present paper reflects on the benefits that poor households headed by women and their children have in the future if the structure economic is not transformed.
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